Hi, I have a short film on You Tube and a advert has attached itself at the end of my film, is there anyway to get it off? If not, would uninstalling it and reinstalling work? I want to put the film on our club's website but minus the advert!

Hi Anne,
Probably you can stop those adverts. This is how I did it a few minutes ago ... but YouTube seems to change its interface a lot, so your account may be a shade different. The general procedure should be similar:

1) Go to your YouTube account. Click the arrow beside your name and from the menu which drops down choose "Video Manager".
2) You will see a list of all the videos you have uploaded. But above that list near the top of the screen in a black and gray toolbar with "Settings" at the right edge. Click that.
3) This opens a page showing settings for all the stuff in your YouTube account. There is an item about Advertisements ... click the button beside "Do not allow advertisements to be displayed alongside my videos "
4) Scroll up to the top of the page and on the right is a "Save" button. Click it.

That should stop the problem.

I am using weasel words like "probably" and "should" because there is another reason adverts might be put on your video... occasionally if you have used commercial music the music owners will let you get away with that, but have an advert for their products added. I don't think you can stop that.

good point Dave..i always tell people who look at video's on Vimeo to press play then pause then let the loading bar reach the end before pressing play again... this normally results in a good quality film playback

It may get better when we get fibre optic broadband ..... I live in hope

Thank you all for your advice. I did as you suggested Dave and ticked the box for "No Adverts" and so far a new film I put on has no advert attached to it. I cannot get rid of the advert already on my current film although I did take it off You Tube then put it back on, didn't make any difference. Just have to live with it!

Just as another perspective, is it so bad that they put an unobtrusive advert next to your video?

If you look at what you get in return for your advert, it's pretty generous! You get fantastic search engine optimisation on your video, you get billions of potential viewers, and a really simple upload, publish and viewing system.

I wonder how much the comparative cost would be to have an advert-free video on your own website?

This is somewhat tongue in cheek, but it is notable how the assumption is that everything on the internet should be free! In fact, most significant things are (kind of) free, but that's because they're paid for by ADVERTS!

Would you like to pay an additional £150 to ITV, and £150 to Channel4, and £25 to Channel5 to save them having to carry adverts too?

I had a customer angry that his copy of Office Starter Edition (Word and Excel for free instead of £90) had a small advert at the bottom right corner. I simply asked how he'd like to pay the £90 to remove it, or would he like me to uninstall it? Of course, he shut up about it then.

Chrisbitz wrote:it is notable how the assumption is that everything on the internet should be free! In fact, most significant things are (kind of) free, but that's because they're paid for by ADVERTS!

Couldn't agree more, Chris. What surprises me is that whilst one might expect this attitude from the younger generation, who have grown up with the ability to make perfect copies of digital data (software, music, videos), there is a large part of the older generation sho share that attitude. In fact I know more "more mature" people who think nothing of pirating software "because it's too expensive" than younger people.

I do worry about what will happen when we all become so blind to the adverts (I never notice them now) that the advertisers realise the ads are having no effect and then cease to advertise. This is, I suppose, where the targeted ads like you described in another thread come into play.